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Wikipedia Debates Strike Over SOPA
An anonymous reader writes "Jimbo Wales has suggested that English Wikipedia restrict its services for a period to protest against the anti-piracy SOPA bill in the United States. This follows a similar action by the Italian Wikipedia last month."
Reader fiannaFailMan points out another bit of Wikipedia news: they've taken the wraps off a prototype for a new visual editor. A sandbox is available to try out. The Wikimedia Foundation hopes easier, more intuitive editing will shore up waning contributor numbers.
I think I've got sublaxations...
I went with Drupal rather than a Wiki because I didn't want to have to write everything in wiki format. Just didn't want to learn another syntax. Have been forced to muddle with it anyway to update some articles.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Also, [citation needed]
Big Jimbo speaks and it isn't about something that isn't feeding his wallet AND IT'S SOMETHING REASONABLE!
I'll support this. This will provide so much more (negative) publicity to SOPA than anything any other group has done to date. GO JIMBO!
Shut wikipedia down for 24 hours (yes, that long, it should really hurt) with some placeholder site saying that this is to protest against SOPA!
Excellent! This would affect me heaps as I use wikipedia many times each day. Given it affects me, I know it would affect many others, and so hopefully it would raise the profile of what's happening.
Hopefully other companies which are against it, such as Google, can do something similar.
Either way, if they start doing stuff like this, that SOPA bill will get a lot more publicity about how bad it is, and it will be dead in the water.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Get Google to go offline for day and you might wake people up. I work in a shop with a lot of techies and it has never ceased to amaze me how many never used wikipedia nor care too. As in, they don't need it. So get someone who truly matters to people, get Google to do a day of it.
As for getting for edits, get rid of the sanctimonious editors who revert everything that doesn't fit their political leaning or doesn't fit in their universe where every song by glam bands is important and characters who appeared in some obscure anime get full page treatment.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I know this comes up every time regarding Wikipedia, but Wikipedia simply gotten more hostile towards new contributors with it's bureaucracy and "territorial editors" (seen way too many revert-happy editors who rather revert than fix minor errors), to the point that I simple start to wonder if Wikipedia is taking itself way too seriously. Making it simpler to edit is not the only answer (though might make it simpler for the few layman who can handle bureaucracy but not the markup).
That this coincides with Wikipedia's annual beg-a-thon for funds is entirely accidental, I'm sure.
Wikipedia after all seems to be have been a Google project to keep search results relevant by incentivizing college students to plagiarize their textbooks into an online encyclopedia with the standards of a blog.
It's a great place to find information about popular culture items. But for anything else, it has a chilling effect. It dominates search results to the degree that people treat it as an absolute source, probably while quoting "1984" about the dangers of absolute, centralized power.
If SOPA reminds us not to trust governments and its manipulations, we should probably ask ourselves: what really is the difference between a democratic government and a democratic group blog like Wikipedia? If they have the same weakness, won't they fail in the same ways, but in different areas?
For example, SOPA takes down sites. Wikipedia however allows us to categorize people as criminals, hackers, anti-social, etc. and allows an "official" opinion to predominate as to the legitimacy of their points of view. How many valid viewpoints have been squelched by Wikipedians refusing to recognize them?
Put another way, if you can't trust a bunch of old guys in suits not to become corrupt, why can you trust a bunch of stoned basement dwellers to avoid corruption? It becomes important when you realize that Wikipedia has a greater cultural influence than even government does.
Futurist Traditionalism
I've never struggled with markup and the editor wasn't a problem. Lowering the barrier to entry just means there'll be more vandalised entries and badly formatted text.
But the real reason nobody contributes is because of the perceived hierarchy and complete lack of human input at times. If I upload a photo, I get 10 or 20 robots written by random people crawl all over it demanding copyright tags etc. and spamming my personal page with their demands.
Every time someone writes a bot that believes my previous tags to be inadequate, I get spammed again and I get my images forcibly removed. There's no human control over it, and the bots are basically allowed to run riot, so even if it was perfectly acceptable when it was first uploaded, and you commented on the exact origins / rights assignment in order to prevent future problems, the next bot that doesn't spot newly-introduced-tag-X on it will just spam you and delete it.
Every time you edit an article, someone who thinks they own the article will just stomp all over it, even if your changes are minor and cosmetic and doing things like removing broken links, changing incorrect spelling, etc. God forbid you add to an article that was all but void of content with some personal knowledge and don't back it up. Surely *something* without citations in an article that's already been created and allowed to remain and even linked to is better than a page that has zero information at all, the citations can come later when people flesh out the article.
And, just occasionally, you'll write an article that will be wiped out as "non-notable", even if it's about a TV program, or a book that's selling millions of copies, or a computer game from the 80's where all its peers are already have their own articles (and the publishing house was famous and their article still sits with a broken link because it mentions that game and there's no article for it).
The problem of Wikipedia is *not* the interface. You *want* people to actually have a deal of experience with editing before they start changing prominent articles. The problem with Wikipedia is that people are allowed to discourage other contributors FAR TOO EASILY, even if their "corrections" are rolled back later.
What's needed is the same kind of system as the Project Gutenberg proofreading site has. Everyone has a login. You have to proofread the text. As you are doing so, your changes are also double-proofread by someone else in another round (there's usually 3-4 rounds). As you gain experience and your edits are "confirmed" (or at least not changed) by other people, you rise through the ranks and it's HARD to get to the point where you have prominent control over the article in question. There are no bots. There are no humans with zero experience of the wiki changing your perfectly-spelled text to junk in the process. There are no vandals that go unpunished. And it works on the same mass scale.
Wikipedia was a brilliant idea and I put a lot of work into contributing. A year later, every careful change I had made was deleted or removed, and that information never found its way back on - those articles are just empty shells now and some were deleted for not having any content after some rogue editor's culling! I haven't contributed since. Show me that the system works and people's hard work is wiped out by a bot written by a schoolkid, and I'll come back. Until then, fancy text editors mean nothing.
News anchor 1: "...The 24 hour shut down is in protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act."
News anchor 2: "And in other news, thousands of students across the world have delayed handing in their homework by 24 hours, claiming that they need the extra time to make finishing touches to their work."
Summation 2
I support wikipedia and any other organisation opposing this absolute drivel piece of legislation! This and the indefinite detention act are proof in front of your very own eyes CONGRESS AND OBAMA ARE CORRUPT AND NEED REPLACING.
SOPA probably requires ISP using DPI and such technologies recently denounced by Secretary of State Clinton as a risk to internet freedom and human rights.
Of course this only applies when used by repressive regimes and not to our dear US of A....(Patriot Act?)
Guess this RIAA, MPAA and DHS sponsored initiative will not be accepted in European courts anyway.
Some time ago, I started to create an article on an entity which is currently in the news, causing great controversy on this side of the pond, and is generally being a dick.
Now, this entity has been slapped down in court, but is still causing merry hell.
Now, what did a Wikipedia (oh great god thou art) Editor say?
Not relevant. If this POS wins the court case, or gets law changed, or is relevant in any way, then yes, a page is warranted.
WTF???
There is now a hundred news articles on this. But, oh not, it's not in the US so it can't be that important to create a whole brand new PAGE. Oh no. Not even when existing pages link to this missing page.
Recently, this same organisation has started to attack others. Still, no page on wikipedia explaining who and what this organisation is for the public to be able to reference.
Now, how is this relevant? Easy. This is like not having a page for Tivo or similar which has and is shaping our world. Perhaps in 10 years the article will be worthless, but today it affects our lives.
It's not happening in the US therefore it isn't relevant (is what I read from the delete reasons).
This is why I don't care to edit any more. I won't. Why waste my valuable time which I am giving to contribute to the pool of knowledge when some dick deletes articles because it has not affected the USA.
FU
FO
If need be, die. See how many articles you have when your contributors twindle to the hundreds.
What a perfect way to demonstrate Wikipedia's irrelevance!
Everybody knows it's the human editors and the edit bots that are the problem, not the editing interface.
A debate is where you have a reasonable number of people on opposing sides. That was more like "Oh yes, we have got to do this" times about 500. Even the "Debate" should make obvoius what the literate world thinks of this idea.
Now, how do we get some legislation proposed that would cut copyright back to reasonable levels, like a flat 14 year monopoly on commercial distribution?
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
People contribute to Wikipedia to help other people. There is an implicit agreement that the user provides the information to WP, and thne WP allows anyone to access it. By shutting it down for political reasons, they are violating that understanding. If they think that they can't run WP if SOPA is enacted, then sure, they should protest like hell. If it's just about the admin's ideals, then they are absolutely permitted by law to shut it down, but they may be violating the expectation of many of their more pragmatic contributors.
Every December, Jimbo goes on the scrounge; sticks his hand out for money. And every single December there's some controversial headline about Wikipedia -- this is not a coincidence.
Honest-Jimbo isn't going to be restricting, nor shutting down, the site this side of Hell freezing over. He's making far, far too much money from it. This is just a stunt, like so many before it -- designed to make sure his source of free money keeps rolling in.
And while there's a great deal wrong with copyright laws, and it is good that it is highlighted, I dare say the main reason for Wikipedia being interested in that, is that there's huge tracts of stolen, and plagiarized, text all over that site.
How come when the NY Times puts up a paywall, Slash think converges on "ha ha information wants to be free, this will never work" but when Wikipedia proposes trying to limit access in the US to make a political statement, it's a great idea?
Someone put a news in my news so I can read while I read! Great!
Internet radio did the same thing, didn't seem to help much. Wiki may get better results though.
Now what site will I go to that's populized by elitist idiots arguing about stupid blog stories on the Internet?
Seriously, I think that Jimbo Wales is approaching Julian Assange levels of arrogance by overestimating his self-worth.
He should just stick to begging for money rather then talking about stupid political things.
Fox News is pro SOPA. Wikipedia could go offline forever and it would not make a difference. Making the SOPA bill matter to the proletariat would involve Google and Facebook going offline.
I support this completely. We can all live 24 hours without Wikipedia but it will do wonders for making people aware of the issue.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
I don't care for SOPA as much as the next reader, but Wikipedia's management really sucks. I tend to avoid that site ever since Jimmy turned it into an annoying ad-driven "give us more moneys" show.
The thought of shutting down access to Wikipedia for 24 hours to make a political statement really spits in the face of contributors that have provided either money or content.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
If I type a load of well researched, well cited information, and some plank can just blow it away with one click, whose view is going to prevail?
Wikipedia is premised on most editors being honest. If that's the case, it doesn't matter if it takes more than 10 seconds to remove vandalism, right?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It has more to do with the obnoxious mods on power trips than the editing interface.
Pulling the plug will not influence the fate of the bill, it will only annoy users. I never understood the idea that you will make people sympathetic to your cause by annoying them. Putting a banner that explains why you think SOPA is wrong is a good idea. It gives visibility to your arguments and might convince people. Turning the site off is easier but accomplishes none of this. On the contrary, not being exposed to arguments against SOFA and not knowing why I should care, I might support it just to piss off the idiot that blocked my access to the site.
I recognize what the idea behind having Wikipedia protest is.
However, the last thing I want is MORE politics from Wikipedia. They are supposed to be an unbiased source of information, thats the claim. Protesting SOPA is in no way unbiased and just goes to show that you can't really use them as an unbiased reference for anything.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Forget it. The battle's already lost. The big media companies are actually running pro-SOPA commercials on TV. "Tell your representatives to protect our information!" Where "our" is cleverly used to imply that the viewer is part of the same "us" that's running the commercials.
Wikipedia already begs for money just to keep the site running. A strike will have as much effect on decision makers as all those "occupy" people sleeping in the park.
And a Merry Christmas to you all.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Sorry, I stopped reading when your headline said you agree with me.
I am not a tax attorney but I believe that tax exempt programs can lose their tax exemption if they engage in political activity. The tax issue comes up with regard to churches from time to time.
To make a real mess, facebook could go into boat, it would drive people crazy.
Most folks are ignorant that this is even an issue; might get the point across to a far wider audience.
Check your premises.
/. went on strike for 24 hours? It would bring the internet to its...oh forget it.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Well I for one almost don't care to contribute to wikipedia for a particular reason - Self righteous editors, I have submitted multiple articles even started one that funny enough still lives, but lately I'm fed up. I have multiple times tried to submit an article on an actor of some renown, at least the same as all the other actors I've seen on Wikipedia only to see it deleted. I then recreated my submission on my own personal wikipedia page and built it more or less to completion refering to exzternal sources as well as substantiated sources on wikipedia, and was planning on working on it there until I figured out what to do out of fear that the editors would heckle and remove the page again, but it happened even on my user space page. The person I'm talking about is both an actor that has played in movies seen by most of the slashdot audience as well as designed costumes for multiple movies, and I just can't get into my head why it is so hard to be allowed to start a stub (a quite thorough one actually - The wikipedians even mentioned considerable contributions in the deletion babble). I find their actions offensive that even as it was under my personal user space it could not be left alone without an eager beaver editor butting in, same for a previous short piece on Cheops-Ng a tool used in connection with networks etc., funny how other open source programs and projects are allowed but no Cheops-ng and same with the actor who is actually a brilliant guy doing considerable charitable work and traveling the world doing his thing. I find it hard to respect the deletionists working at wikipedia and think that rather than focusing on user friendliness they should take a long look inwards to see the true reasons that contributions might be stagnating. I for one shall think twice before wasting time contributing there again. For the heck of it try to do a google search on deletion wikipedia.... makes you think...
MS, ALS, Aphasia ? http://globability.org - Me http://einarpetersen.com
References to URLs often rot. Your national newspaper article or local TV station article will likely not be accessible at the same URL in 2-3 years because of the constant CMS churn.
Then what? It gets deleted for no references? Unverifiable information? Or does the valid-but-no-longer-referenced data get cut?
Wikipedia is a farce. Sometimes it's a handy farce, but I'll never donate a nickel nor a minute of my own until they fix their fundamental problems (which requires top-down change; IOW it will never happen).
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
They ought to just land every article on a SOPA/PIPA article with links to petition for the period.
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
Just take down the site for a week, no placeholder, just a 404 error. Word of mouth that freaking Congress, who everyone hates anyways, is the reason for Wikipedia being gone will be fantastic.